Cron

austinderrick2

I need some help with cron... I would like it to change something every Friday...

Does a visitor have to be on the page at the time?? 😕

ahundiak

Nope.

austinderrick2

still need some help on seting it up....

ahundiak

cron is an operating system command with minor variations between different versions of linux/unix.

But this might get you started.
http://www.htmlcenter.com/tutorials/tutorials.cfm/155/PHP/

dalecosp

'cron' is a UNIX program from ages past. If you have a Linux or BSD or other UNIX-like system, I would suggest 'man cron.'

The essentials of cron are as follows:

The cron daemon is run on the system at startup.
Every minute, cron wakes up and checks its "crontab" files for jobs. It performs those jobs and goes back to sleep for about 59 seconds.
Each user on a UNIX system may have a crontab if permitted by the sysadmin.

The crontab generally looks something like this:

#minute (0-59),
#|      hour (0-23),
#|      |       day of the month (1-31),
#|      |       |       month of the year (1-12),
#|      |       |       |       day of the week (0-6 with 0=Sunday).
#|      |       |       |       |       commands
  0     2      *       *       0,4     /home/bob/somescript

You can see that 'somescript' belonging to user 'bob' will run at 2AM on Sunday and Wednesday.

HTH,

dalecosp

Ooh, also, use "crontab -e" to edit your crontab (at least, over here in BSD land that's how it's done). Don't edit the files directly.

austinderrick2

how do I setup this on myweb host? or do I set it up on my computer?

dalecosp

Who's your webhost? What's your computer?

I doubt that many hosting companies provide cron, but I run my own servers, so I dunno.... 🙂

Why are you asking about cron might also be a place to start....🙂

NoFear

I've written my own cron file for my site.

It's a simple concept, really.

Think about it, if nobody's accessed your site, it doesn't need to be updated, correct? I mean, nobody's gonna see it anyway.

All you need to do is include "cron()" at the beginning of every script. Cron checks the time, and if it's time to update, it updates before the page even begins to load. If not, it doesn't.

It's much better than trying to gain cron access with your web host. And it's completely customizable, too.

I can get into more specifics if need be, but that should get you started

dalecosp

You mean a "Cron-like-functionality" ?

I don't find anything here.

Cron is a 'daemon' run on 'Nix like systems; it was written by Paul Vixie, who is also the brain(s) behind the "King James" version of Sendmail, BIND, a half-dozen or so RFC's, etc., etc................

austinderrick2

If I include it in my php does the viewer have to access the page at the time it changes? I have lots of visitors but I don't want it to axidently miss once or twice...

All you need to do is include "cron()" at the beginning of every script. Cron checks the time, and if it's time to update, it updates before the page even begins to load. If not, it doesn't.

What if two vistors load at the same time will it do it twice?
😕